Day 20: Lydia Davis, Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Hardwick

TODAY the theme is gender and relationships. I wont complicate things. The texts primarily concern the classic divide of men and women. We'll go from there. Poem: Lydia Davis - A House Besieged (1986) If there is a writer who inspires me more than any other, it is Lydia Davis, who writes very short blocks of writing, always perfect in form. She calls them all stories, even if they are just a handful of words. Sometimes I see them as stories, but often I see them as prose poems. Here is a simple one I chose for its thematic similarity to the other texts: In a house besieged lived a man and a woman. From where they cowered in the kitchen the man and woman heard small explosions. “The wind,” said the woman. “Hunters,” said the man. “The rain,” said the woman. “The army,” said the man. The woman wanted to go home, but she was already home, there in the middle of the country in a house besieged. I read this eleven years ago, and it still stays with me- I can't explain why. It is simple,…